NAME
getifaddrs
—
get interface addresses
SYNOPSIS
#include
<ifaddrs.h>
int
getifaddrs
(struct
ifaddrs **ifap);
void
freeifaddrs
(struct
ifaddrs *ifp);
DESCRIPTION
Thegetifaddrs
()
function stores a reference to a linked list of the network interfaces on the
local machine in the memory referenced by ifap. The list
consists of ifaddrs
structures, as defined in the
include file <ifaddrs.h>
. The
ifaddrs
structure contains at least the following
entries:
struct ifaddrs *ifa_next; /* Pointer to next struct */ char *ifa_name; /* Interface name */ u_int ifa_flags; /* Interface flags */ struct sockaddr *ifa_addr; /* Interface address */ struct sockaddr *ifa_netmask; /* Interface netmask */ struct sockaddr *ifa_broadaddr; /* Interface broadcast address */ struct sockaddr *ifa_dstaddr; /* P2P interface destination */ void *ifa_data; /* Address specific data */
The ifa_next
field contains a pointer to
the next structure on the list. This field is NULL
in last structure on the list.
The ifa_name
field contains the interface
name.
The ifa_flags
field contains the interface
flags, as set by
ifconfig(8) utility.
The ifa_addr
field references either the
address of the interface or the link level address of the interface, if one
exists, otherwise it is NULL. (The sa_family
field
of the ifa_addr
field should be consulted to
determine the format of the ifa_addr
address.)
The ifa_netmask
field references the
netmask associated with ifa_addr
, if one is set,
otherwise it is NULL.
The ifa_broadaddr
field, which should only
be referenced for non-P2P interfaces, references the broadcast address
associated with ifa_addr
, if one exists, otherwise
it is NULL.
The ifa_dstaddr
field references the
destination address on a P2P interface, if one exists, otherwise it is
NULL.
The ifa_data
field references address
family specific data in a pointer to the struct
if_data (as defined in include file
<net/if.h>
). For
AF_LINK
addresses, it contains various interface
attributes and statistics. For all other address families, it contains
per-address interface statistics.
The data returned by
getifaddrs
()
is dynamically allocated and should be freed using
freeifaddrs
()
when no longer needed.
RETURN VALUES
The getifaddrs
() function returns the
value 0 if successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned and
the global variable errno is set to indicate the
error.
ERRORS
The getifaddrs
() may fail and set
errno for any of the errors specified for the library
routines ioctl(2),
socket(2),
malloc(3) or
sysctl(3).
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The getifaddrs
implementation first
appeared in BSDi BSD/OS.
BUGS
If both <net/if.h>
and <ifaddrs.h>
are being
included, <net/if.h>
must be
included before
<ifaddrs.h>
.